


winter is in my bones

by merriell



Category: MBLAQ, T-Ara
Genre: F/M, Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: The girl knocks him out of his trance when she says, “You should go home. The lake is dangerous at night.” Her voice is soft and sweet and soothing, and he almost obeys. But the girl, no matter how old her eyes are, is a girl, and he’s not leaving her alone.“You should go home, too. The lake is dangerous at night,” he repeats, with no intention of mocking her.The girl laughs; it’s hollow and there’s no humor in it. A smile creeps up at the corner of her lips. “I’m already there,” she says.*An old fic. Based on Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente.





	winter is in my bones

  
Beautiful things are dangerous, his father told him. Beautiful women are worse. They could be witches or fairies or rusalki or anything else, because all beautiful women are bad and his father wanted him to be afraid of them. Chulyong can still remember vividly the day his father told him a story about how his cousin’s friend fell in love to a beautiful woman and was drowned in a lake by her, not because he was a pig who were deserved to be killed, but because all beautiful women are wicked and evil.

Chulyong watches the girl, and she’s a girl, really, younger than him but there’s something on her eyes that showed otherwise, like she has seen things worse than the war that had been on since the last summer. He can’t think of anything that is worse than the war, and this makes him feel some kind of pity for the girl for having to see such things when she is younger than him.

Her brown locks are wet but her body and her dress are as dry as desert sand even though she just came up from under the water. Chulyong, obviously, finds this odd, but he’s too mesmerized to notice, because when he looks to her eyes it feels like he’s drowning, slowly, and he’s enjoying it.

The girl knocks him out of his trance when she says, “You should go home. The lake is dangerous at night.” Her voice is soft and sweet and soothing, and he almost obeys. But the girl, no matter how old her eyes are, is a girl, and he’s not leaving her alone.

“You should go home, too. The lake is dangerous at night,” he repeats, with no intention of mocking her.

The girl laughs; it’s hollow and there’s no humor in it. A smile creeps up at the corner of her lips. “I’m already there,” she says.

 

  
Chulyong finds her again in the woods.

“The woods are as dangerous as the lake at night,” she says, laughing softly. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at her from the ground as she brushes her hair with a wooden comb that looks like it has just been picked up from under the lake. Her hair are still wet and there’s a puddle of water on the ground below the branch she’s sitting, but her white, thin dress is still completely dry. She adds, “There are dreadful creatures here.”

Chulyong snorts. “Such as wolves?” he asks, because he knows that there are wolves in the depth of the wood but never near the village. It’s apart of their instincts, he thinks, because the last one the villagers found near the village was dying of an arrow wound.

“No,” she laughs, “Even worse.”

And something about her laugh makes him shiver because it’s almost not human and he doesn’t know why. She’s just a girl, with wet brown locks and pale skin and a drowning gaze and a white, thin dress, but she’s beautiful and he remembers what his father had said to him about beautiful things.

He doesn’t run, though. He stays there, staring at her. There’s a long silence until she sighs. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I need to go.”

“What? Wa—” Chulyong tries to stop her, to prevent her from going, but there’s a long, loud howl from behind him and he turns around to check if he’s safe. “Hey, you…” he looks at the willow tree again, wanting to ask her to run with him, because she’s right, there’s something about this woods that bothers him.

But she’s not there. All that's left is a trail of water, heading to the lake.

 

  
Beautiful women are dangerous, all of them say. Not just his father—the butcher, who told him a story about beautiful witches who eat children for lunch; the librarian, who told him about a cousin of her who was thrown from the edge of the cliff because a fairy was jealous of her relationship with a certain huntsman; even the kids who enthusiastically told him not just about the mermaids, but also about men who puts on wolves’ skins as clothing so they can become one with them and sylphs and goblins and swan maidens.

He understands that maybe beautiful women are dangerous but she, the girl he found in the woods, is a girl and not a woman. Also if she’s really that dangerous, she would’ve killed him that night. The first time they’ve met.

“I’ve heard you often went in and out those woods at night, boy,” the barman starts and Chulyong just rolls his eyes, expecting lines of nagging and how dangerous it is (because he knows, really, and he’s sick of hearing it all the time) and how he is a fool and how he is risking his life. But instead of that the barman just asks, “Do you know what’s inside that kind of woods?”

Chulyong just shrugs. He had heard stories but he never really listened to it. Those stories that flew out of men’s mouth are mostly crap anyway, to scare away little kids from the woods because they don’t want them to be lost—which means that the adults have to search for them even thought they doesn’t want to—and the barman smirks and chuckles as he wipes dusts from the beer glasses that is piled up on the counter.

“Wolves, and rusalki and fairies and dwarves.”

“They’re fiction,” Chulyong frowns, annoyed. He thought the barman was going to say other things, more real, like smugglers or thieves or killers or huntsmen. “Also, I thought dwarves are supposed to be kind like in that story.”

The barman chuckles. “No to both of your statement,” he smiles, almost wickedly. “There are none who are kind. They’re wicked and evil and everything, and sometimes they may smile or sing on your behalf—but mostly theirs—but they’re not, and never, kind.”

Chulyong frowns even harder. “If you’re going to forbid me from going into that forest—”

“Why would I?” The barman asks. Chulyong raises an eyebrow. “In the woods or in the village, it’s dangerous.”

“Why? There are no wolves or anything beside men in the village.”

“Oh?” The barman grins. “I don’t know about anything, but let me give you a man’s wisdom: not all wolves put their fur all day.”

Chulyong stands up almost immediately. He knows that something is completely wrong about the man, which sent a shiver running down his spine. The man somehow notices this and grins even wider, almost wolfishly.

“And some girls,” the barman continues, “aren’t just girls.”

 

  
She is brushing her hair again, her wet brown locks shining. She’s humming, too, a strange tone that he unconsciously remembers without any efforts. When she sees him, she smiles the same smile she has been giving him at their previous meeting. But now, she doesn’t laugh, doesn’t say anything, it’s almost as if she was already expecting him to come to the lake again. Maybe she does. He had already fallen to her trap from their first meeting, anyway.

“My father used to tell me stories about beautiful women,” he starts, eyes pierced to her figure—her pale skin, her wet brown locks, her fiery green eyes, and wonders how could he become so blind when it’s so clear in front of him. She looks up from her hair to him, almost uninterestedly. He continues, “who was really beautiful, who born and died in the lake. My father told me they drown men because they don’t know how men breathe.”

For a moment she looks surprised, before she smiles, slowly. “I think the name of the creature your father told you is rusalka.”

“They lure men to the lake, he said that too, and lead them away to the river floor to their death,” he continues.

“Your father is a clever man,” she says, and turns away from him.

“You didn’t drown me that night. Why?”

“I didn’t want to,” she says, simply. She throws her comb to the lake and steps into it, her wet brown locks swinging in the night’s air.

“Why?”

She turns to him for a moment, smiling. “I never asked to be a rusalka. I never asked to be born in the lake. I never asked to be beautiful,” and she stops, for a moment, as if she’s hesitating to continue, but she does, her voice softer. “I never asked not to know how men breathe. I want to be something other than rusalka; I do not want to kill men. I do not want to know how men breathe. I do not want to live forever.”

There’s a silence for a moment before he asks. “What do you want to be?”

“Human,” she answers.

 

Chulyong meets the barman again the next night. The barman’s brow rises when he sees him, but he pours the younger a drink and puts it on the counter. He drinks and realizes that it isn’t alcohol but just water—plain, ordinary water, and when he opens his mouth to protest, the barman cuts him.

“No way I’m going to let you drink, kid,” he says simply.

“Then I want to talk,” Chulyong replies, frowning.

The barman looks around and realizes that there’s no one there, except the drunken man, sleeping peacefully. He sighs and pours himself a drink, and Chulyong watches him as he shakes his glass impatiently. There’s still a half glass of water in that glass, but there’s no way he’s going to drink the water again.

“What if those creatures exist?” Chulyong starts, putting his glass on the counter. The barman raises his brow again. “Rusalki, wolves, dwarves, fairies…” he murmurs, staring at the half-full glass, and the barman hums in acknowledgement. “Why do they want something better?”

The barman sighs. “It’s about the rusalka, isn’t it,” he speaks flatly, and Chulyong’s gaze shoots up to him, surprised. “I suppose you are in love with her.” Chulyong blushes almost immediately, and he chuckles at that. He takes Chulyong’s glass from the counter, dumps the water somewhere, and pours a beer in it. He gives the glass to Chulyong, who accepts and drinks it with ease. “Falling in love with a rusalka, not really a good choice, you know. Do you even know her name?”

Chulyong shakes his head.

The elder snorts. “For fuck’s sake, kid.” And Chulyong thinks that he’s going to mock him for that, but the man’s eyes falls somewhere and for a moment Chulyong thinks he’s watching something faraway. “It’s not that I made good choices in my life, though…” he murmurs.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he denies. “There’s a way but there are risks too.”

“I—” Chulyong blurts out before he corrects himself, “I mean, she—she’s willing to take risks. Um, me too.”

“You have to be ready for the goodbye, though.” The man smiles almost sadly. “You know what happen if a rusalka’s hair dries out?”

Chulyong shakes his head. His father had said nothing about it.

He laughs and shakes his head in disbelief. “They die,” he declares flatly.

 

  
He boils a pot of water. She’s brushing her hair again, humming that sweet, sweet tone she’s always repeating.

“The water’s ready,” he says five minutes later, and she sits up from the corner, leaving a puddle of water from where she was sitting. He doesn’t protest anymore, doesn’t say anything, just searches for a dry cloth from the drawer and wipes it off the floor while she washes her hair with the water he was boiling. Sometimes, when he doesn’t bother the puddle, she helps her washes her hair, his fingers brushing through her wet brown hair.

And this time it’s the latter. He helps her, and when her hair’s all wet again, he kisses her forehead. She smiles and reaches out to stroke her cheek. He smiles back.

“Jiyeon?” he calls out, because he knows her name now. “I love you.”

The rusalka giggles softly before repeating the same word.

 

  
A long winter comes. The water freezes, the firewood run out. She tells him she can no longer stay.

So there’s goodbye, a last, freezing kiss before she smiles and he runs his fingers through her wet, brown hair for the last time. He shivers and she laughs.

“You shouldn’t have fall in love with me, Chulyong-ah,” she states when he holds her tightly, refusing to let go, even though he shivers from the wetness of her hair—it’s starting to dry out, she realizes, it’s starting to freeze because of the temperature.

“I never asked to be in love with you. It’s your fault. You lured me with your singing. You seduced me, Jiyeon-ah.”

She smiles and gives his hand a long, lingering hold before she lets it go. When she dives herself down the lake, he stares at the hole before turning away.

 

  
(And they keep on doing it, until he can no longer build a fire and make a hole on the frozen lake again. My old bones will follow you, she whispers to him, even though she doesn’t change at all from the first time he met her.

She let her hair dry out in the summer.)


End file.
